Guyana reaffirms confidence in International Court of Justice

SOURCE: Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC)

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali says Guyana re­mains con­fi­dent that the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) will rule in its favour in the decades old bor­der dis­pute with Venezuela.

Oral hear­ings in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy con­clud­ed on May 11 and Guyana’s case af­firm­ing the va­lid­i­ty of the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award is now ful­ly be­fore the ICJ with a fi­nal, bind­ing rul­ing ex­pect­ed ear­ly in the new year.

In June, the Ali ad­min­is­tra­tion all that re­mains to be done is for the ICJ to de­lib­er­ate, draft its judg­ment, and de­liv­er it in a pub­lic ses­sion, a process the ICJ has his­tor­i­cal­ly com­plet­ed with­in six to eight months of the close of hear­ings.

“We are hop­ing that ear­ly in the new year, there will be a rul­ing at the ICJ; we are very con­fi­dent,” Ali said in an in­ter­view with the in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast­er Al Jazeera.

Ali said be­yond the rul­ing the fo­cus turns to “build­ing a re­la­tion­ship and en­sur­ing that the re­gion re­mains strong, sta­ble, se­cure, and that both coun­tries can ad­vance its eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial and op­por­tu­ni­ty in an en­vi­ron­ment that is free from fear.”

The case, filed by Guyana in 2018, seeks the Court’s con­fir­ma­tion that the 1899 Award and the bound­ary it es­tab­lished be­tween then-British Guiana and Venezuela is valid and bind­ing un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law.

The ICJ has twice af­firmed its ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the mat­ter, rul­ing in 2020 that it had au­thor­i­ty over the case and dis­miss­ing a fur­ther Venezue­lan ob­jec­tion in 2023. The Court has al­so twice grant­ed Guyana’s re­quests for pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures, most re­cent­ly or­der­ing Venezuela in 2025 not to pro­ceed with elec­tions in the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

Venezuela’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives main­tained their re­jec­tion of the Court’s au­thor­i­ty dur­ing the May hear­ings, ar­gu­ing their ter­ri­to­r­i­al po­si­tion pre­dates and stands apart from the ICJ process.

But Ali asked about Cara­cas’s po­si­tion dur­ing his in­ter­view replied “those are words that we have heard many times, but we know the fact and the truth in re­la­tion to the 1899 Award, and the court is go­ing to de­ter­mine the mer­its of words and facts.”

On whether Guyana is brac­ing for con­tin­ued re­sis­tance from Venezuela re­gard­less of the out­come, Ali said “I wouldn’t say we are brac­ing, but we are pre­pared for any re­ac­tion to the court rul­ing.

“We are very con­scious of these words… notwith­stand­ing the fact that Venezuela has par­tic­i­pat­ed ful­ly in every as­pect of the case be­fore the ICJ,” Pres­i­dent Ali said.

He added that the Unit­ed States con­tin­ues to play an im­por­tant role in sup­port­ing re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty and that George­town’s re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton re­mains un­changed and root­ed in prin­ci­ple. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)